Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Books In Order

Publication Order of Den of Shadows Books

Publication Order of The Kiesha'ra Books

Publication Order of The Maeve’ra Trilogy Books

Publication Order of Mancer Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes is an American writer that was born in Silver Spring, Maryland in 1984. She was born to a father that was a public policy consultant and had vice principal for a mother. Both of her parents were big fans Ann Rice the horror writer, which served to whet her appetite for the genre. She grew up in Concord, Massachusetts and went to school at the Concord-Carlisle public school from kindergarten until she graduated in 2001. During her school years, the loved music and asserts that singing was one of her favorite past times, though she never got the courage to ever take part in high school plays. Nonetheless, she was very much involved with the drama community at CCHS, and was a key member of her high schools fencing team, an experience that has inspired many of her urban fantasy story lines. She currently lives in Massachusetts with family and several pets, and studies psychology and English at the University of Massachusetts. She hopes to one-day work either in special education or as an English teacher. Aside from her writing she has some very eclectic hobbies that include things like driving, riding Harley-Davidsons, carpentry, gardening, playing the piano, aquarium keeping, cooking, cross stitching, and a good debate with someone equally as good in debate. She also loves to learn new things when she has some down time. She can often be found poring over a book, video, or website trying to learn a new skill that could range from such mundane things as belly dancing or something as serious as JavaScript.

Atwater-Rhodes asserts that her mother pretty much raised her on novels of aliens, Dracula and Stephen King. With such an inspiration for a mother, the writing bug hit her very early and by the second grade, she was already hard at work working on her first novel. By the time she turned nine, she was reading some of the most advanced novels in the science fiction and horror genres. Novels such as “The Last Vampire” by Christopher Pike form the basis for her non-stereotype fitting vampires. She had such a passion for becoming a writer that by the time she was in the fifth grade, she had started spending all her after school hours writing. She would often crank out sixty pages a day when she was writing her first novel “In the Forests of the Night” inspired by Jagged Little Pill album by the singer Alanis. By the time she was thirteen she was often called the teen successor to Anne Rice, though she was yet to publish any of the over a dozen drafts on her shelves. Amelia was lucky to have an English teacher that was a literary agent, and after she learnt that she wanted to become published, read her work and became her agent. She learned that she had become a published author on her fourteenth birthday in 1998, when Tom Hart her agent called her to inform her that Random House had given the nod to her manuscript. However, it was not until 1999 that Random House published the teenage writer’s first novel. The novel went on to become a huge success attracting a huge following of young urban adult fiction fans, and critical acclaim from critics such as Publishers Weekly that declared it an imaginative and insightful work.

While Amelia Atwater-Rhodes novels in the Den of Shadows series share the same name and themes, they may be read as standalone novels. Set in Amelia’s New England hometown, the first novel in the series is about Risika, a 300-year-old vampire that was bitten to become a vampire while living in colonial times. It is in this novel that the author showcases her exceptional world building skills, while offering some of the best in imagination and character creation and expansion of vampire lore and genealogies. Over the course of the three novels, she creates characters that are easy to relate and bond with, thus easily getting the reader engrossed in the story. Some of the characters such as Jessica Ashley Allodola who made an appearance in the first novel recur in the subsequent novels, and as the lead character in the third novel “Demon in My View”. Even as the vampires in the novels are more human like with emotions such as jealousy, Amelia still serves up the obligatory dose of romance, vengeance, and fantastic fights in all of her works. With some of the most complex lineages of a vampire series, the novels have creative solutions to keep the several plots and subplots compelling enough through suspense in the lead up to the explosive finale.

“In the Forests of the Night” is the debut novel by Atwater-Rhodes written while she was a thirteen year old. Amelia shows some outstanding world building skills in the writing of her debut novel that would not be expected of an author her age. The novel switches between 1701 and the present, and features a 300-year-old vampire who used to be Rachel Weatere, before she was turned into a vampire three centuries ago. Risika spends most of her days in dark room in Concord, Massachusetts and emerges at night to walk the streets of New York to hunt. She is used to being alone, but recently, she feels that there was an unknown person following her. Coming back home one morning, she finds a black rose on her bed, the same kind of rose that led to the events that left her a vampire 300 years ago. Three centuries past, she had a family – a father and brother with whom they were inseparable. But all that is in the past as she is now a very powerful vampire, who nonetheless feels threatened by someone who either knows her from the past, or has found out about her past.

“Demon in My View” is the fast moving sequel to the first novel in Atwater-Rhodes Den of Shadows series of novels. The lead character in the novel is a high school student named Jessica that made her first appearance in the first novel in the series as Ash Night. She is the publisher of a vampire novel known as “Tiger Tiger”. But what is even more bizarre is that the characters that she wrote from her imagination actually exist. The vampires are not too happy about Jessica outing their secrets, as the village of New Mayhem is a hot spot for vampire hunting witches that would harm them if they just knew how. Aubrey the vampire is now out for vengeance against Jessica and comes to her school disguised as a new student. Jessica’s dark aura turns out to be a huge attraction for him and he pursues her, as she invokes in him the need to protect her rather than kill her. Jessica has an equal attraction to the vampire and thinks it would be cool to achieve superhuman powers, though she is not too sure if she can trust the dark and brooding vampire.

One Response to “Amelia Atwater-Rhodes”

1. Valerie Chouinard: 2 years ago

   I Followed and have every single book since I was in middle school. I hate reading and yet I am glued to all of them!
   I am disappointed in the fact that I cannot add the ebooks to my BOOK collection. 😕 I would’ve loved it if there was a book option, especially for those who are old school.

   Reply